As the water rains down in a wide spray drenching my hair, Tyler appears before me. I’m tempted to reach out and caress his stubbled cheek, the way I always did when we took showers together. But my hand halts mid-air. I fist my fingers and drop my arm.
I just wish he could touch me.
He must sense my frustration, because his brow wrinkles, pain etched in the lines of his face. But true to Tyler, he doesn’t allow those emotions to own him. He purposefully scans his gaze over my body, a smile replacing his frown.
“You’re beautiful,” he says. And with a subtle movement, he lifts his hand toward my face.
I close my eyes and summon the memory of his touch.
“I want to see you content . . . satisfied, Sam.” My eyes snap open. Content. “Be my hands. Touch yourself where I touch.” His translucent fingers skim my arm, working their way down.
I nod and close my eyes again.
“Look at me,” he says. “Don’t shut me out.”
I do as he says, and when his hand moves across the sensitive skin of my hip, my fingers trail it. Roaming lower, I caress myself, working my body into one pulsing heartbeat—mine and Tyler’s combined.
And when the cresting pleasure takes me, I stare into his eyes. I fall against the tile, shaking. As always, after the release, the tears come. The shame. It never used to feel this way with him.
He kneels next to me. “Don’t . . .”
“Please leave,” I say.
Hurt flashes in his dark eyes. “You want me to go?”
“Not forever . . .” I hang my head. “I just need a moment.”
When I look up, he’s gone.
“That was a nice trick,” my mother says as I hit the bottom stair.
I flinch. Moving fully into the foyer, I say, “You’re always saying I should take better care of myself.”
She shakes her head and returns to the kitchen where she pulls a tumbler from the open-faced cabinet. Then she reaches for the vodka. “You could start by fixing your hair, if you want a starting point.”
With a scowl, I reach up and run my fingers through my slick hair. A thick blond streak running along the middle of my scalp reveals my natural hair color. The same ash-blond as my mother’s. I’ve been dying it black since the first day of ninth grade, and it doesn’t even look Goth or Emo. I have naturally dark eyebrows and fair skin, and with my strange yellow-green eyes, it just works.
“It wasn’t Leah,” she says. It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about the person I just avoided. This surprises me because Leah is the only one who might bother to come around. Everyone else has moved on, even Tyler’s family. Or what’s left of it.
Mr. Marks is still seeing his girlfriend (I think they’re even engaged now), and they go yachting on the weekends. She helped him through his son’s death, just like she did Shannon’s, his wife. And Holden . . .
“It was Holden,” she adds.
I freeze in the kitchen entryway. Ice forms in my stomach, and my hands tremble. “I’m going for a walk.”
Her mouth parts, like she’s going to say something else, but I turn and head for the front door. I’m sure I’ve just shocked her speechless. Normally, I don’t choose to leave the house. It takes force and a lot of threats about calling my doctor and her “team” to intervene to get me out anywhere other than my sessions.
But I suddenly need fresh air. It’s too closed-in, too stuffy in the house. And I don’t want to take the chance that Holden might come back.
I find the worn path around the pond, the same path I walked daily all my life. The path that leads to Tyler’s house. I’m not going there. It’s the last place I want to see. But the path is familiar. My feet find it without even trying. Habit.
The crickets sing around me, and for a second, I’m confused. I didn’t realize that it was almost night. I stop and glance around, then decide to plant myself right where I am. The pond is dark and placid, static. The sky and pines reflecting on its surface. Like two skies, one on top of the other.
Running my fingers over the long grass, I fall back into a memory.
FIVE MONTHS EARLIER
The smell of gum and wood polish assaults my senses, and slow background music with sad violins fills the air of our community church. Flowers are everywhere. The music lowers as the pastor takes his place at the podium. A blown-up black and white portrait of Tyler is propped next to an altar that holds his urn.